Proposed overhaul of 1973 Species Act bad for Isle critters

There is broad consensus that our nation's law protecting rare wildlife, the Endangered Species Act, could be improved; agreeing on how to make improvements is much harder.

Authored by a conservative Republican who has suggested selling 15 national parks if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not opened to oil drilling, the bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives does not represent consensus. Indeed, more Republicans voted against their party on this bill than almost any other major legislation passed this year.

We agree with U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's recent assessment that the most controversial aspect of the bill is that it would require taxpayers to pay developers not to kill or injure endangered or threatened plants and animals. Thanks to the flexibility of the current law, only 1 percent of development projects have ever been stopped, and all but one of these projects were implemented after modifications were made to address concerns about listed species.

This bill will undermine the current flexibility of the law by encouraging developers to take the "payoff" rather than considering environmental needs when developing their lands. This will likely require tens of millions in annual taxpayer-funded payments to developers and other landowners — millions that will likely come out of already under-funded recovery budgets.

But this is only one of many objectionable provisions of the House bill.

In Hawai'i, this bill would create more bureaucracy that would make it even harder to protect dozens of plants and animals that are in danger of extinction. The bill lets the fox into the hen house by requiring that the very same economic interests that have caused the decline of a species be included on the team that writes the plan for its recovery.

It also exempts pesticides from current requirements to review their impact on endangered wildlife.

Finally, the bill eliminates current protections for habitat without providing adequate alternative protections necessary for the recovery of endangered plants and animals. Recovery of the O'ahu 'elepaio, a bird unique to O'ahu, would become much more difficult if the habitat needed for its recovery could be destroyed.

The Endangered Species Act has helped bring back wildlife like the nene goose, honu and Hawaiian monk seal. This bill would undermine that progress, without addressing important issues where species recovery and private landowner incentives could be improved.

There is still a chance to save the Endangered Species Act. The Senate plans to take up this debate in the near future. One can only hope that they will take their responsibility to be good stewards of our nation's wildlife seriously. If they don't, our children will pay the ultimate price.

Tim Male is a senior ecologist at Environmental Defense, a national environmental group with more than 1,100 members in Hawai'i. He previously worked for the Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resources and received his doctorate from UH. Jamie Rappaport Clark is executive vice president for the national environmental group Defenders of Wildlife and former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during the Clinton administration. They wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.